Emeritus Professor Michael Humphreys

Emeritus Professor

Overview

I received my BA in Psychology from Reed College in 1964 and my PhD in Psychology from Stanford University in 1970. I arrived at the University of Queensland as a lecturer at the end of 1979. Previously I had served as an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia and Northwestern University. I was promoted to professor in 1991 and served as head of department from 1994 to 1996. From 1998 to 2004 I served as the director of the Australian Research Council funded Key Centre for Human Factors and Applied Cognitive Psychology. I am a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science. I have been Emeritus since 2010.

I have published 1 book, 107 journal articles and 24 book chapters and refereed conference proceedings. My publications include four major theoretical articles in the Psychological Review as well as a major theoretical article in Behavior and Brain Sciences. In addition I have consistently published in the major empirical journals in my area including the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Cognition, The Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition, the Journal of Memory and Language, the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, and Memory and Cognition. I have a record of ARC grants going back to the start of the present granting system plus two NH&MRC grants. I currently have an ARC Linkage grant.

I am perhaps best known for my work on the Global Matching Models where I focussed on the cues, the role of context, the nature of the memory access operations, the discrimination problem faced by the memory system in solving specific tasks, the distinction between episodic and semantic memory, and the complexity of the memory representations. I have also been interested in the role of arousal/motivation in memory and how memory is controlled. All of these issues have been readdressed in a book which I havewritten with Kerry Chalmers.

My work has been cited 6356 times (Google Scholar) and 2065 times since 2012. My h index is 36, 18 since 2012.

Research Impacts

I have been interested in applying my knowledge of memory to applied problems. In this regards, I have worked on the role of memory in learning disabilities, air traffic control, facilitating care of dementia patents, and in memory for sponsorships. I have also co-authored a paper with Dr Andrew Smith validating the results produced by a knowledge discovery program. My latest applied project is an ARC Linkage grant investigating the role of similarity in trademark disputes. In this work much of my focus was on improving the way memory research was used to answer applied problems.

Grech, Michelle R., Neal, Andrew, Yeo, Gillian, Humphreys, Michael and Smith, Simon (2009) An examination of the relationship between workload and fatigue within and across consecutive days of work: Is the relationship static or dynamic?.
Journal of Occupational Health Psychology,
14 3: 231-242. doi:10.1037/a0014952

Loft, Shayne D., Humphreys, Michael S. and Whitney, Susannah (2008) Control of access to memory: The use of task interference as a behavioural probe.
Journal of Memory and Language,
58 2: 465-479. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2007.04.002

McAuley, JD, Stevens, C and Humphreys, MS (2004) Play it again: did this melody occur more frequently or was it heard more recently? The role of stimulus familiarity in episodic recognition of music.
Acta Psychologica,
116 1: 93-108. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2004.02.001